Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: https://preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/07/27/362-luis-bettencourt-on-the-universal-properties-of-self-organizing-cities/ People who live in large cities produce more patents per person than those who live in small towns. They also walk faster down the street, and use less infrastructure per person. Indeed, the relationships between these quantities and city population obey power laws with apparently universal exponents, reminiscent of scaling laws is biological organisms? Luis Bettencourt argues that they can be explained in similar ways, using ideas from complex systems and network theory. Luis Bettencourt received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Imperial College London. He is currently the Lorna Puttkammer Straus Professor Department of Ecology and Evolution & Data Sciences Institute, as well as Associate Faculty and Special Friend in the Department of Sociology, at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Introduction to Urban Science: Evidence and Theory of Cities as Complex Systems. Mindscape Podcast playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrxfgDEc2NxY_fRExpDXr87tzRbPCaA5x Sean Carroll channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/seancarroll #podcast #ideas #science #philosophy #culture